


Just Because

by lyricwritesprose



Category: Doctor Who
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-07
Updated: 2017-06-07
Packaged: 2018-11-10 05:35:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,099
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11120967
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lyricwritesprose/pseuds/lyricwritesprose
Summary: Rory doesn't feel like he measures up. The Doctor decides to do something nice for him.





	Just Because

**Author's Note:**

> This is a remix of the first part of "Here (in your arms)" by such_heights, who can be found on www.whofic.com, and it's pure plotless fluff. Proofreading, brit-picking, and otherwise saving me from myself by Persiflage.

So, intellectually, I knew that Amy and the Doctor were going to rescue me. Even if I wasn't going to marry Amy three thousand years ago tomorrow morning, they would rescue me. Both of them are heart-stoppingly, nail-bitingly brave. Both of them lack the mental circuit that lets a person look at someone in trouble and think, _meh, not my problem._ They'd be here. They'd come.

When you're sitting in a cold, stone, near-lightless dungeon cell infested with six-legged lizard-rat-things—when you have no idea how long you've been there—it can be hard to really believe that.

So here's the thing: I'm not _jealous_ of the Doctor. Not exactly. Not after meeting the dark side of his subconscious, a nasty little man with a flawless instinct for where to twist the knife. Yeah, there have been some moments when he hugged Amy, and I watched them, and there was this bitter, sinking feeling that the two of them had a connection that I don't have, that I'll never have, and I—honestly, I probably sulked a bit, because it got to me. But for the most part, I wouldn't want to be in his shoes for anything.

I do envy him, though. Because he's brilliant. And I don't just mean intelligent, although there's that. There's something about him, a presence, a power, a mad off-kilter charisma that makes him the center of any room he walks into. Terrifying as hell, when you stop and think about it; when you wonder what would happen if he ever decided to raise an army or start his own cult, and realize, _well, for one thing, I'd be in it. I'm not immune._

What he actually does with it, though, is to find the most frightened person in the room, look him in the eyes, and tell him that he's brave. Or to find someone who's weak and doubting herself and tell her that she's amazing. And because he believes it so strongly, because he talks them into believing it too, _it makes them better._ Braver, stronger, kinder.

That's a bit magnificent.

I'm extremely boring in comparison, and I know it. The truth is, sometimes I don't really believe I'll be getting married. It doesn't seem real. Either something will happen to me, or Amy will look at me one day and actually see me for what I am. Plodding. Unheroic. She'll kiss me good-bye and say _thanks for the memories_ and the two of them will go on together to light up the sky like twin suns.

One of the lizrats zipped across my foot, making me jump. I heard a commotion outside.

The r'thaisar are almost all over six feet tall; the tiny barred air-vent in my cell was too high for me to see out of. But I could hear, and what I heard almost made me collapse in relief. A guard—the same r'thaisu who brought me food, I think—with a note of panic in his voice, telling someone to stay there, don't come any closer, he'll call for help, he means it. And undercutting that, a cool, familiar voice explaining what was really going to happen.

I couldn't hear all of it. A scary Doctor is a quiet Doctor. But I caught phrases like _Princep overthrown_ and _the Tower of the Winds is burning._ "A millennium-old caste system lies in smoldering ruin," the Doctor finished, "because _I want that door open_. And you're standing between me and it. Please. Take your time."

Approximately three picoseconds later, I heard the key in the lock. And then the door was open. I rushed out, directly into Amy's waiting hug.

God, the smell of her hair was pure heaven. And I could feel muscles unknotting with relief. Somewhere in the back of my brain, an amazed voice was gibbering, _they came, they came, they really came,_ and never mind that I'd always known they were going to.

Amy was asking me if I was hurt, if they'd done anything to me. "I'm fine," I said—which was true, now that she was here and I was holding her. I buried my face in her shoulder for a long moment, then let her go—reluctantly—and looked up at the Doctor. "Thanks."

He was grinning as if he'd just invented Christmas, but he said, "Oh, it was all Amy, believe me. Pond, permission to hug?"

Yeah, he'd been doing that a bit lately. I couldn't tell if it was his way of working around my Amy issues—which would be very nice of him, because they _were_ my issues, I knew that and wasn't proud of it—or if he'd heard me muttering _tell me more of this Earth thing called personal space,_ and decided to actually explore the concept. Amy waved a hand regally and said, "Granted."

He wrapped his arms around me, squeezed me hard as if to reassure himself that I was there, and then held me gently. Any other time, I would've felt very awkward about the tenderness of the gesture. Right now—

It was not knowing how long it had been that had been getting to me, I think. Intellectually, I knew it couldn't have been _that_ long, because I'd only been fed twice and I wasn't starving. But when you're sitting in changeless near-darkness, sometimes it's hard to convince yourself that it hasn't been weeks. Maybe you forgot some meals. Maybe you're going mad.

I think I must have been shaking a little, because the Doctor stroked my hair. "I'm sorry. This was all my fault."

Well, yes. It was. But he'd just been trying to get a r'thaisu child back to her k'thaisu mother. Castes on this planet aren't an artificial hereditary concept; they're based on whether people have wings or not. The s'thaisar can actually fly; the r'thaisar have shorter, nonfunctional wings (but they're strong, and getting hit by one _really hurts)_ and the k'thaisar—well, if they bear a winged baby, they're considered blessed, but the baby is immediately taken so they don't contaminate the kid with the "taint of the ground." Even if I hadn't been caught inside the Home For Ascendant Children, the odds were that I would have gotten in trouble somehow for looking like an unusually short, pink k'thaisu and not knowing my place.

"'It's okay," I said. "It was probably my turn to get abducted anyway." You learn to be philosophical about these things.

We unlocked the rest of the dungeon cells and went outside—and good god, for once, the Doctor _hadn't_ been bluffing with no cards, no chips, and no poker table. The Tower of the Winds was burning.

I stared, then looked from it to the Doctor. "Did you _actually_ start a revolution just to get to me?" Because I wasn't sure how I felt about that. I mean, yes, the caste system was fairly horrid, but—I mean, a _revolution._ They generally aren't pleasant.

The Doctor gave me a split-second, not-reassuring smile. "Bullies," he said softly, "make me cross."

"We sort of nipped in behind a revolution that was already about to happen and gave it an extra shove," Amy explained. "Gave them the strategic information they needed. Then the Doctor threatened to demolish their whole organization, root and branch, if they didn't give the k'thaisar servants time to get out of the Tower, and I generally threatened people to get them moving. And _then,_ we used the whole thing as a distraction."

"But—okay, so all the _bits_ were already there, but you're basically saying you started a revolution to get to me."

"It would have started in another month anyway, and I think we probably minimized the loss of life. Besides, _he,"_ Amy pointed her thumb at the Doctor, "has done this before." The Doctor gave her a startled look. "Yes, you have. It's obvious. It'd be obvious even if you hadn't _name-dropped Spartacus."_ She turned back to me. "And he's memorized the formula for building-clearing stench weapons, _and_ he knows his home-made explosives. Seriously, he's like that mad anarchist Muppet, only in space."

The Doctor looked profoundly insulted, like a cat being forced into a twee floral bonnet.

By the time we got back to the TARDIS, though, he was back in good spirits. After the usual rough dematerialization, I noticed him watching me, studying me as if he had never seen me before. "Rory," he said, "you're a boy."

"Er, yes . . ." If he hadn't noticed it before now, then I wasn't quite sure what to tell him.

"And as far as I know, you like things that boys like."

"Er, some things . . ."

"Right!" A brilliant grin. "I know where we're going next."

It took a while and a bit. I can't tell you any more closely than that, because there aren't any working clocks in the TARDIS. (I did once find a rather creepy room full of timepieces—this was back when I was still attempting to map the TARDIS, in the forlorn hope that it would start making sense—but none of them actually seemed to be running.) And the Doctor, who I've seen time things down to the second without ever glancing at his watch, refuses to even estimate how long it might be until dinner; he just says there's no time in the Vortex. What with one thing and another, I've started to think that his sense of time is profoundly different from the human version. That it's external, rather than internal, and he's actually sensing the seconds _go by_ somehow.

Well, he is a Time Lord. Someday, maybe I'll get an explanation of exactly what that actually means.

At any rate, there was enough time for me to shower and change clothes and have a sandwich and get comprehensively snogged by Amy, which led to—there was enough time. The two of us got back to the console room just as we landed.

The Doctor stopped in front of the doors and turned towards us. "Important note," he said. "We have landed somewhere _extremely_ dangerous. No wandering off. In fact, no wandering out of sight of the TARDIS. If I tell you to run, do it immediately; if I tell you to freeze where you are, _do not_ move, or risk an excruciating death."

Um. "And you thought this was the sort of place I'd like?" I said.

I think the grin I got back was, _the universe is stuffed with awesome!_ rather than, _deadly danger, cool!_ but I wasn't sure. They look dismayingly similar. The Doctor threw open the doors.

To be honest, I'd sort of expected a lava planet. What I saw was grass. Very long grass, the way prairies and savannahs look without humans around. Not the most intimidating of places, but I've learned that you can't judge by appearances. I followed the Doctor out the door, moving as cautiously as I knew how.

And stopped dead, well aware that my eyes had gone absolutely saucer-round, and not caring a bit.

They were alive. They were huge. They were _right there;_ there wasn't even any glass between us and them. They smelled like a mixture of a chicken coop and the elephant pen.

Amy slid out behind me and stopped just like I had done. "That," she said a bit faintly, "is a styracosaurus. An _actual_ styracosaurus."

She was right. It was. Well, styracosaur _i,_ actually. Each of the males—they had to be males with those brilliant colors, the blue and scarlet on their shields, the darker red on their flanks—had stamped down a patch of grass. As I watched, a brown and white zebra-striped styracosaur ambled vaguely towards us, and the nearest bull started—well, _dancing._ Shaking his head to show off his colors and horns, stamping, rearing up and coming down with an impact that I could feel in my bones.

It was a display. Like two-ton peacocks.

"Boys," the Doctor said smugly, "like dinosaurs."

Oh _hell_ yes. In five minutes, I would probably be running for my life from Utahraptors. Right at that moment, I didn't mind. I had my glorious wife-to-be, I had an ancient crazed alien anarchist for a friend, and I was watching dinosaurs dance. Because the Doctor took us to the Cretaceous, because he thought I'd like that. No other reason required.

Intellectually, I knew that they cared about me because they were extraordinary, not because I was. But I didn't mind that, either. They _did_ care, and it was the most marvellous feeling in the world.

And besides, _dinosaurs._ Just—dinosaurs.


End file.
